


Minotaur

by abyssalhandmaiden



Category: Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Guilt, Inner Demons, Mental Landscape, Multi, Retribution Spoilers, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 00:20:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20611802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abyssalhandmaiden/pseuds/abyssalhandmaiden
Summary: Some things are better left alone.





	Minotaur

_Deep breaths. Count backwards from three. Three._

Darkness. A low rumble. The scent of ozone and scorched earth.

_Steady. Keep going. Two._

Dry heat. Howling winds laden with grit.

_No turning back. One._

Volcanoes and hollow ruins jut from the ground like broken teeth decayed to jagged shards. The ash-choked sky roars, the cracked earth growls a retort. Blue-violet flashes and bursts of lurid orange illuminate the wasteland. At its heart gapes a bleeding wound, a drooling maw, a bottomless pit.

Serafina stands at the crumbling edge of the chasm, watching rivulets of lava trickle down into the darkness. It’s grown (wider, deeper, more desperate to be filled) since the last time she dared descend into her own mind. Troubling, but not as much as the reason why she’s here now.

_I’m not alone here._

The ground trembles and groans beneath her as a distant peak erupts, venting a dark plume of smoke into the storm raging overhead. Whatever she’s looking for didn’t linger out in the open. Raising a hand to shield her eyes from wind-blown cinders, she turns from the pit to focus her attention on the burnt and broken remains of what might once have been a city.

_There._

It’s a raw spot on the inside of her cheek, easily overlooked until she prods it with her tongue. The sore recoils from her touch, fleeing deeper into the concrete labyrinth. Gravel and shattered glass crunches under Serafina’s heavy boots as she gives chase.

Right at the charred shell of an apartment complex. Left down a narrow alley, one collapsing wall braced against the other in a precarious arch. Serafina barely notices the crash of it surrendering to gravity behind her as she slows to a halt at the steel-shuttered entrance of a vacant warehouse. What’s left of it, at least. The metal slats are torn from their railings, bent and twisted outwards, revealing a sliver of the darkened interior. A sticky trail of rust-brown splotches leads her inside.

Something soft yields under her boot as she carefully crosses the threshold.

_Fuck me._

A brown leather Mary Jane pinned under a length of steel. Serafina kneels down and pries it free, turning it over in her hands. She remembers buying them for Delilah, how well the brass butterfly accent on the strap fit the personality she was crafting: unbreakable, unfettered. Not that it mattered. Lies are fragile, rarely satisfying.

She drops the shoe on the dusty floor of the warehouse and continues following the trail of blood past toppled shelves, through aisles strewn with broken crates. The remains of a door, splintered wood hanging loosely from its hinges. Stairs leading down into darkness.

The room at the end of the stairs is familiar and Serafina hesitates, nearly choking on her own heart. Entering Dr. Mortum’s laboratory, even this ruined replica, after everything that’s fallen apart between them, feels like a trespass. The heartache only stops her for a moment. Her life has been a series of trespasses: going where she isn’t wanted, taking what isn’t hers. But this time she had to look the consequences in the eyes, watch them harden.

The room shakes, walls crack, equipment crashes to the floor.

_Stop. I am in control here._

The earthquake ebbs into aftershocks, then stillness. Stale, smoky air. Serafina picks through the scorched wreckage of Dr. Mortum’s desk, catching a glimpse of bright orange. Her shirt, tattered and bloody.

**(Like everything you touch.)**

_What the fuck are you?_

Serafina waits, ruined shirt held in a white-knuckled fist, struggling to steady her breathing, but her question goes unanswered. She throws the shirt aside with a growl and walks towards the empty frame once occupied by the bedroom door, now ripped from its hinges, charred fragments scattered across the floor. More stairs, deeper darkness.

Descent. Vertigo. Nausea. Serafina has walked up these stairs more times than she can remember, more times than she ever should have. She curses under her breath as she exits the stairwell into Ortega’s apartment complex. Scorched, blood-stained carpet. Peeling wallpaper discolored by smoke. Deep gouges clawed into every door.

**(Closer.)**

Not a sore, but a festering wound. She doesn’t have to feel for the pangs or count apartment numbers to know where it is. Holding her breath, she steps through Ortega’s door.

Monitors cast the room in a faint, sickly glow. The silence is broken by the low hum and sharp, intermittent beeping of medical equipment. A dark shape looms over Ortega’s hospital bed. She raises a hand to ward it off, the cables plugged into her mods’ recharging ports pulling free. A spark, then nothing. Snapping bone, tearing flesh. Blood foams on her lips, stains her thin sheets.

Exhale. Six lurid yellow-orange eyes open in the darkness. Leathery wings unfurl. A long tongue licks dripping, stringy gore from its fanged jaws.

_Oh, fuck me._

Dr. Mortum’s work is exceptional, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the horror bleeding out of the shadows. The Hellraiser-thing circles the periphery of the room on all fours, claws clicking on the floor, horns gouging the walls, growling low and hungry.

_I need to get out._ **(No, stay.)** _Three._

Serafina turns and runs, splashing as she finds her footing in the sewers. Not water. So much blood filling her boots, soaking her clothes. She gags, swallows bile, keeps running. Behind her, the Hellraiser-thing roars like an erupting volcano.

_This isn’t real._ **(I’m more real than you.)** _Two._

Left, right, right. These tunnels look the same. These tunnels never end. Hot, sulfurous breath on the back of her neck. Too slow. Claws rake down her spine. She screams, falls to her knees.

_I am in control here!_ **(Are you?)** _One._

Light. The distant din of rush hour traffic. The bitter tang of sweat.

Serafina staggers into the bathroom, empties the scant contents of her stomach into the toilet, and rinses out her mouth at the sink. She stares into the bathroom mirror, uncertain of what she’s looking for in her haunted reflection. Hating what she finds, nevertheless.

She flinches when her phone rings from her makeshift bedroom, fear bleeding into irritation as she retrieves it. “Fucking hell. Not now, Ortega.”

Deep breath. “What do you want, old woman?”

“Hello to you, too. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed today?” Ortega sighs indignantly, but Serafina can hear the way her lips curl into a smirk.

“Rough day. I’ve been sick for most of it.” It isn’t a lie. Not entirely.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Sera.” Serafina hates how easily Ortega switches gears from teasing to tender, how soft her name sounds on her tongue. Every word makes it that much harder to remember that they’re enemies. “I was checking to see if you still wanted to go out for drinks tonight, but we can reschedule.”

A dying spark. Six burning eyes.

A wave of nausea forces Serafina to sit down. She manages a dry laugh.

“Unless you want to spend half the night holding my hair back in a Hoots bathroom stall, we’re going to have to.”

“That doesn’t sound like a fun evening for either of us,” Ortega agrees, chuckling quietly. “You have therapy tomorrow, yeah?”

“Yeah.” It’s stupid. Risky. Last time she went, she let Dr. Finch catch a glimpse of the rapacious monster she kept caged for so long. Too long. It could’ve ended very badly.

“You want me to go with you?”

The answer, small and vulnerable, escapes her lips before she can swallow it back down, “Please.”

“Okay. Get some rest.” A pause. “I love you, Sera.” The first time Ortega said it, Serafina nearly ran. This time she holds out the words cautiously, like she’s offering food to a stray dog instead of a beast that would take her hand and more in a single bite.

_One day we will meet in the labyrinth and only one of us will walk away. You better know what you’re dealing with by then because I’m not sure I ever did._

“I love you too, Julia.” It isn’t a lie. It would be so much easier if it were.


End file.
